As the 2024-25 school year enters its third week, Yelm Community Schools (YCS) is once again dealing with transportation concerns. Parents and families have expressed frustration over buses running behind schedule and students being denied a ride because of full buses.
Superintendent Chris Woods said, however, the problem is more correctable than the lack of staffing the district faced in the transportation department last year.
Woods said the blame should not be placed on the drivers, and that a new technology system called Traversa Ride K-12 is being implemented, but there are a number of kinks to be resolved.
“The challenges that we’ve had have been largely due to technology and the program that we were hoping to have better implementation [of] by now. However, we’re getting there,” he told attendees at the Sept.. 12 board meeting. “But I do think it’s important to recognize our drivers and our staff there. They are great people, and they love their job.”
Traversa Ride K-12 is a system that downloads student information, including their stop location, and parents can download the app to follow the bus and their student. Each student has their own card on a lanyard that they scan upon entering the school bus. Woods said part of the problem is that the district doesn’t have all of the students in the system.
“We had tried to promote and advertise for parents to register their child in the system so that we could have them on day one, so we didn’t have all the students in there. On day one, parents want their kid to ride the bus, but they’re not registered on there, but we’re not going to say no,” he said. “We had, in some cases, way more students at certain stops, so then we had to have another bus come and pick them up.”
Woods added that the program deficiencies are “being ironed out” and that he hopes that every student will be in the system and have their card in a lanyard by the end of the week. He said there have been growing pains on the district’s part.
“What we’ve had to do is go in and clean up some of the data. … We’re getting the glitches of the new system ironed out,” he said.
The district is “in a good place” in terms of its quantity of bus drivers, Woods said, although some recent illnesses have caused the transportation director and assistant director to drive buses, and some routes were canceled last week. The district has also added routes this year because a number of buses were full last year.
Kay Anderson, a YCS parent, spoke to the YCS Board of Directors during its Thursday, Sept. 12, meeting at Mill Pond Elementary about her concerns regarding the state of the district’s transportation services.
“While I understand onboarding these staff can be very challenging, the current situation is unacceptable. Students are being forgotten by buses, waiting at their stops and parents, including myself and my husband, were left with unanswered calls or unreturned messages seeking assistance,” she said. “These failures are not inconveniences; they directly impact the safety and wellbeing of our children. As a district, we need to do better. Our students and families deserve a reliable, responsible transportation system, and I urge you to address these issues.”
Parents and families can learn more about and register for the Traversa Ride K-12 system at https://www.ycs.wednet.edu/departments/transportation.
